


see you behind those tired eyes

by brodinsons (aeon_entwined), mashimero



Category: DC Extended Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Communication Failure, Gen, Kryptonian Biology, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Justice League (2017), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Strength Kink, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-28 23:38:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14460321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeon_entwined/pseuds/brodinsons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mashimero/pseuds/mashimero
Summary: Struggling to adapt after being resurrected to save his adopted planet from an entirely new threat, Clark tries to figure out where he belongs in a world that moved on without him and what the true motivations were behind Bruce Wayne — the man who almost killed him — risking it all to bring him back.





	see you behind those tired eyes

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Superbat Reverse Bang 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14465103) by [brodinsons (aeon_entwined)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeon_entwined/pseuds/brodinsons), [mashimero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mashimero/pseuds/mashimero). 



> This is my half of my team's entry in the [Superbat Reverse Bang](https://superbatreversebang.tumblr.com/)! I was so very fortunate to be paired with [mashimero](https://mashimero.tumblr.com/) for this venture, and you'll find their art that inspired this piece at the "inspired by" link! There's also a [fanmix](https://open.spotify.com/user/mashimero/playlist/1Ne4VOyptsAV7g9r38hlUz?si=Uk7ZZO5PRYGR5KmSQ37lOA) for everyone's enjoyment.
> 
> As voraciously as I consume Superbat content, I'm not very good about contributing anything, so I put myself up to the challenge of signing up for the reverse bang back in October of last year, and now here we are! Once I got a glimpse of mashi's art, I knew wanted to try my hand at a Clark-centric exploration of the fallout of the events in Justice League, because we really got shafted there. And longfics have historically been one of my weak points, so I struggled a bit, but I hope I did my favorite boy justice! /obnoxious rimshot

Even with Ma settled back home, the farm is unnervingly quiet.

It’s one of the first things he noticed after getting resettled. He wasn’t _alive_ to notice how quiet it was in a coffin six feet under Kansan topsoil, so all he had was the sudden flood of _everything_ as he crashed through the scout ship’s membrane-thin exoskeleton, followed by the remote stillness of the farm once the world stopped ending and he could hit the pause button long enough to reorient himself.

It wasn’t lost on Lois that he’d instinctively flown them to Smallville, rather than her Metropolis apartment. Or even his. After they’d had a few days to sit and talk, he’s back in possession of a ring he should’ve spent more time deciding on in the first place.

They’ll always have each other and how much they love each other, she’d said. And it’s comforting, knowing that nothing fundamental has changed between them. Coming back from the dead isn’t exactly a simple event, so Clark doesn’t blame her. The trauma of losing someone so brutally and then having them back again with no warning or preparation after spending over a year learning how to adapt and move on…

Anyways.

The point is Lo’s back in Metropolis and he’s been out here for weeks.

You can’t exactly go waltzing back into your job after they were the ones responsible for printing your obituary, no matter what Lo says about Perry. And Clark isn’t sure he wants to be back in Metropolis. Too many parts of it remind him of different moments that have him lurching awake in the middle of the night these days, bathed in sweat.

He remembers the endless tortured shrieks of the Frankenstein-like creation, the crackle of raw electricity, the sensations of his body knitting itself together after getting nuked at the edge of the atmosphere. He remembers everything.

More often than not, he wishes he didn’t.

For all intents and purposes and to the world at large, _Clark Kent_ is dead.

The Superman? He’s risen to the status of myth.

Clark can’t wander back out into public life and expect there to be no questions. No government-led investigations. No deep dives on the web about his identity and the coincidental reappearance of both Clark Kent and the Superman.

So, for now, his option is to exist as the Superman. The scarlet cape and the emblematic shield splashed across his chest that — somehow — doesn’t have a hole through it anymore. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s not. He gets to help people and save people. But he’d been someone, back before the mess with Lex Jr’s monster. And no longer being someone is taking a toll on his head. So, as much as he understands why the eclectic team of superpowered folks did what they did, he can’t help resenting them a little.

Well, he resents the ones in charge, at any rate. Wayne and the Amazon, Diana. He hasn’t interacted with them much since Chernobyl, but it hasn’t been hard to tell who the ones spearheading the initial operation were. And maybe _resents_ isn’t the right word. He isn’t sure.

_You won’t let me live. You won’t let me die._

Clark shudders, accidentally dropping the towel he’d been using to dry Shelby off after her bath.

He remembers the panic and the confusion and the scalding rage as he’d picked Wayne up by the neck and tossed him aside like a child’s toy. There’s so much he still doesn’t understand, even if the directionless resentment over his stolen agency is there. Why was it _Wayne_ who wanted to bring him back? Sure, the world was ending and the Steppenwolf ― really, _Steppenwolf_ ― guy was too much for them to handle alone, but the risk was unbelievably high. What if he didn’t come back at all? What if he’d come back like Zod? What if he’d come back _worse_?

The questions are never ending and being stuck in his own head whenever he isn’t out in the suit isn’t helping. Ma’s started giving him cautious sidelong looks when he lapses into silence for too long and that’s enough of a bad sign on its own.

Clark heads up to his old room once Shelby’s dry and frolicking around the front yard. It’s as much of a storage space as it was when he went off to college and left home for good, but there’s even more crap strewn about now. Boxes upon boxes of memorabilia and pieces of his past. He and Lo spent plenty of time in here before she finally headed home.

He hasn’t gone through all the new boxes yet, but Ma unloaded most of the essentials back into the closet and the rest of the house when he was suddenly not dead and the house wasn’t owned by the bank anymore. She’s still traumatized, though Clark can tell she’s masking it with a mother’s expertise.

There’s a smaller box with what looks to be a bunch of papers or books in it that draws his eye, so Clark picks it up and plops it on his old mattress, waving a hand in front of his nose as dust plumes up from the comforter.

Flipping the top off reveals a chaotic assortment of newspaper clippings, articles notated with Lo’s handwriting, and glossy magazines. Most of the covers feature the Superman, as expected, though there’s the bold red border of a TIME issue visible towards the back that prompts him to pull it out of the collection. It’s not very old ― six months, judging by the issue date ― and the paper quality is still almost pristine. The bright red border was a bit misleading, since the red is used across the entire cover.

Said cover features none other than Bruce Wayne, front and center and facing away from the camera. Belatedly, Clark realizes that the digitally altered scarlet background is interrupted by a rendering of the El crest just beneath the TIME title. And not only that, but the shot has Wayne with a trendy black blazer halfway down his arms, revealing the word “REMEMBER” stamped across the back of his dark blue t-shirt in bold stark white lettering.

Attention arrested against his better instincts, Clark stares at the cover for a moment longer before flipping through the magazine to find the allotted section for the cover story.

It was a charity event for the embattled survivors of the dramatically christened _Doomsday Battle_ , as he finds out. Wayne donated millions, set up further recovery funds, schmoozed with reporters, and was caught in one of the photo inserts with a screen printed version of crest emblazoned in all its red and gold commercial glory across the chest of his t-shirt, casually on display under the tailored blazer.

Lo was the one who sat him down weeks ago, opened her laptop, and showed him the results of the world’s conflicted response to the Superman’s demise.

It was...overwhelming, to put it mildly.

Sure, the people who hated him and railed against his existence didn’t exactly turn on a dime. There were still plenty of folks petitioning to have him prosecuted. But the rest of the world is the part that really stunned him. The public outpourings of grief filmed on phones and cameras for youtube channels, the newscasters running nightly specials to delve into his “heroic exploits”, the entrepreneurial types who started the t-shirt trend. There’s actually a whole collection of different shirts, as he’s found. Some have his house crest on the front, others have “REMEMBER” in red and gold, and some have an almost cartoonized version of the crest.

But Wayne’s is the real one. Or, as real as you can get with a screen printed reproduction of alien armor on a cotton t-shirt. And no matter which picture Clark looks at, he seems proud as hell to be wearing it. So this wasn’t a publicity stunt? He wore it on his own?

“Hey, Ma!”

There’s some rustling downstairs, followed by a: “What is it, honey?”

“Come up here for a minute, would you?”

Clark flips back to the cover and perches himself on the edge of his bed. He glances up as his mother enters the room, then holds the magazine up.

“Is this for real?”

Her expression does a few complicated shifts, then seems to settle on something close to wistful.

“Oh, sweetheart…” she approaches the bed and sits on the same side of the mattress, with the box between them. “That Alfred of his sent me that copy, would you believe it. I didn’t even know they’d gone and done something like that.”

Clark mulls that over for a moment, brow creasing in a frown. “So it’s not just....publicity? For the cameras?”

Martha looks him directly in the eyes at that, and Clark suddenly feels all of twelve years old again.

“I know he seems...gruff, but the fact of the matter is Bruce has done more for this family than either you or I deserve. Is he still trying to make amends for what he did? Quite possibly, but he knows that’s water under the bridge even if he won’t admit it.”

“How-” Clark cuts himself off, turning where he sits to face his mother properly. “You’ve talked to him? When?”

Martha laughs, actually going so far as to throw her head back for a moment before putting a hand to her chest and composing herself. “Sweetheart, the man _paid_ for the funeral. I wasn’t letting him escape that without talking his ear off. He’s been a good friend. A good listener.”

A _good friend?_

“I...I really did miss a lot, didn’t I?” Clark says faintly, letting his gaze fall back to the magazine clutched in his hands.

“Yes, you did,” Martha reaches over and gives his wrist a gentle squeeze. “But you’ve got all the time you need to catch up. You should try talking to him. Then you can box his ears for me for digging you up without so much as stopping by to tell me.”

Clark snorts, unable to keep from laughing at that. It’s just so outlandish that it can’t be anything but funny, now.

“Jesus.”

Clark flops back across the width of the bed, then turns his head to smile faintly at his mother. “We’re all kind of fucked up, huh?”

She swats his arm for the language, but smiles regardless as she gets up. “That, sweetheart, is an understatement. Now get off your duff and help your mother with lunch.”

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Clark calls after her, affecting an exaggeratedly petulant whine before staring up at the ceiling of his room.

The directionless resentment he’d been so focused on earlier has kind of calmed down a bit, at least in the face of this new info dump. He will admit it’s hard to see the vicious vigilante with an armored boot on his throat and the apparently polite listener who’s become friends with his mom as the same person, but there’s a thread here that’s itching to be followed. His reporter instincts are knocking and he should probably answer. Plus, he needs to get out of the house for more than disaster interventions and he should probably make an effort to be a team player with this new super group instead of hiding off on his own all the time.

He pictures Gotham in his head, with its near omnipresent clouds and the creepy way the city itself manages to exude a subtle hint of menace towards outsiders no matter if it’s broad daylight or not. Pretty much a perfect home for the Bat.

Well...time for a visit, then.

He should probably call ahead to be polite, but he doesn’t actually recall coming across a phone number for Alfred or Bruce that wasn’t linked to Wayne Enterprises.

Maybe Ma will have something. Or maybe he should just go.

* * *

A few days later, Clark cocks his ear towards the general direction of Gotham and narrows his focus to the man that’s been at the forefront of his thoughts lately. The rhythm of Bruce’s heartbeat is presumably at resting tempo, but that doesn’t really mean anything. The guy has the steadiest heartbeat of anyone Clark’s ever encountered, even when he’s fighting. It’s downright creepy.

The ambient noise around him is still as a grave, which tells Clark he’s more than likely at the lake house. Perfect.

“Be back later, Ma!” He calls, pulling on the Kryptonian suit and launching himself out the front door in a matter of seconds. Taking to the sky feels like gulping a breath of pure oxygen after being trapped underwater for hours. He still hasn’t found his equilibrium yet and he doubts that’ll happen anytime soon. It’s not like there’s anyone out there he can go to and ask how you pick up the threads of a life you unceremoniously left behind after you were brutally killed in public and your death was broadcast across every major news network on the planet.

Jesus, he’s just a walking pity party, isn’t he? Get a grip, Kent.

Arriving in Gotham takes just a few minutes at the speeds he can reach even without really trying, but he circles above the lake house a handful of times. Dropping in out of the blue last time didn’t seem to startle Alfred too badly, but all things considered, the man’s probably less likely to be shocked by anything than Bruce is. Clark can’t even begin to imagine what _raising_ the kid who would become the Bat must have been like.

Once he forces himself to get over his reluctance, he lands lightly on the gravel of the drive and begins walking towards the front door. Politeness is probably the best way to go this time, though he’s seen Bruce chafe at it in crisis scenarios.

The door opens before he gets to it, revealing Alfred’s familiar face and equally steady heartbeat.

“Master Kent,” comes that accented voice, inflected with only the faintest hint of uncertainty. “A surprise visit for Master Wayne, I presume?”

Clark smiles faintly and pauses on the threshold, feeling all of twelve as he fights the urge to worry the hem of his cape in both hands. “Something like that, yeah,” he agrees. “Is he in?”

“Of course,” Alfred steps aside and motions for Clark to enter. “Though you already knew that, yes?”

At Clark’s mildly worried look, Alfred waves a hand and shuts the door after him. “I mean no offense, Master Kent. Master Wayne amassed quite an exhaustive collection of research on you ― which I’m sure is no surprise ― though Ms. Lane was the one to provide that particular nugget of information. Just prior to your....return, actually.”

Clark huffs a laugh, suddenly conscious of the suit’s lack of pockets to shove his hands into as Alfred leads him into the kitchen. She probably told them so they could lay out every contingency for his return. How he might react to hearing Bruce’s heartbeat or Lo’s, or no one’s at all.

“Yeah, I knew,” he admits, gratefully accepting a chilled beer that Alfred pulled from what Clark can only assume is thin air while he wasn’t watching and that he suspects was stored around due to Lo’s advice as well. “And call me Clark, Alfred. Really. I figure we’re on a first name basis around here.”

“As you say, Master Kent,” the man says with a serene smile that tells Clark this is probably not a battle he’s going to win, alien powers and all. “Master Wayne will be up shortly. Please make yourself comfortable.”

 _Make yourself comfortable_ mostly translates to wandering out to the dock and onto the lake, beer in hand. It feels a little too close to trespassing to hang out in the living room or the kitchen, so at least he can enjoy the fresh air out here. The quiet helps him focus on the background noise of Bruce’s heartbeat again, even after having gotten called out on it by Alfred. Well, at least that’s one less secret to be worried about dancing around. Though it’s starting to feel a bit like he’s been pinned up on a specimen board; helpless and resigned to being peeled back one layer at a time while the Bat studies him. It’s discomfiting in a way the resentment decidedly isn’t. It’s also an older feeling, having been present since that no-holds-barred, knock-down-drag-out fight in the abandoned warehouse in the heart of the Bat’s territory.

Clark’s frowning into his half-empty beer, lost in thought, when he becomes aware of footsteps in the house behind him.

“Jesus-” comes a low mutter, which is a far cry from whatever flippant quip he’d been expecting.

Well, maybe he can give it a try and see where it gets them.

“Nope, just Clark Kent,” he turns, smiling faintly as the synthetic fabric of his cape ripples in a barely-there breeze while his booted toes graze the surface of the lake. “Sorry.”

Bruce is standing just outside the open sliding glass doors, with an expression on his face that Clark hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with. He makes the executive decision to get both feet back on the dock, but he keeps his beer in hand, if only to have something to occupy his restless fingers.

“How are you?” Bruce’s voice stays low and private, like he’s approaching a wild animal.

Clark’s brow furrows slightly. “I’m...okay?” He tries, but that doesn’t clear much of the stormy expression settled on Bruce’s features. “I’m alive, so that’s something.”

Bruce makes a dismissive sound and crosses his arms. He looks _angry_ and Clark can’t figure out why that would be for the life of him. “You died because of me. Now you’re alive again, mostly because of me. That’s...not an easy thing for anyone, no matter where you’re from,” he gives Clark a slow look. “I’m not looking to you for forgiveness, Clark. That’s the last thing I deserve from you. I just want to do whatever I can to help you now. With whatever it is you need.”

Clark swallows awkwardly, the simmering resentment and confusion having been unprepared for that much level honesty. And from the look of it, it cost Bruce a decent amount to get all of it out. He looks vaguely ill.

“...I didn’t die because of you.”

That was not exactly what he’d meant to say to kick the rest of the conversation off, which he’d intended to make about the magazine cover, but it is what it is. Oh well. At least Bruce is looking at him like he’s grown an extra head instead of staring at the dock, looking like he’s about to be sick.

“I’m serious, Bruce. You didn’t kill me. I mean, you almost did. Back there with the spear. I’ll give you that. But you didn’t _kill me_. You saved me and you saved my mom. So whatever penance you’re trying to do for that, I don’t want it.”

Looking at him now, Clark doesn’t think he’s seen this many expressions on Bruce Wayne’s face in the admittedly short time he’s known the man, let alone all at once. It’s a lot to take in, especially from a guy that keeps 75% of his face covered in matte black kevlar most of the time.

“I held your body in my arms,” Bruce’s voice is a little louder now, though there’s a manic edge to it Clark isn’t sure he likes. “I held you and you barely weighed anything. Your chest was gone, Clark. Lungs, heart, all of it. I kept looking down, handing you to Diana. Just seeing this empty hole and all the blood in the cape-”

“Hey-” Clark drops his beer bottle as he moves forward to grip Bruce’s shoulders, only realizing it when his ears pick up the faint shattering of glass on polished wood. “Bruce, hey. It’s over. It’s over. I’m right here, yeah? Good as new.”

Bruce is staring at him like he’s never seen him before in his life, though Clark’s fairly sure that was some sort of trauma-induced episode. So the confusion is understandable. Even so, he’s a little thrown by the idea that _he’s_ the one comforting _Bruce_ , when his initial goal coming over here was...well, maybe not getting a sympathetic pat on the back but _something_ , at least. None of this is going according to plan.

They stand there for a few minutes, staring at each other.

Then, without warning, Bruce grabs him by the nape with both hands and kisses him. Clark freezes up, eyes wide and hands flung out awkwardly at waist level. It’s not a very _good_ kiss, since he’s not participating at all and Bruce is mostly kissing a statue. But why the hell is Bruce kissing him?

As quickly as it was initiated, Bruce jerks away and stumbles a few steps back across the dock. He looks stunned, though by his own daring or the lack of response, Clark isn’t sure. Was this a point he was trying to make? Or was he trying to provoke a reaction? The only reaction Clark can dredge up is blank confusion.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says roughly, turning for the still open doorway in a seeming panic. “ _Fuck-_ ”

“Bruce, wait-” is all Clark gets out before the sliding glass door is slammed closed, leaving him standing on the dock with more questions than he arrived with and the shattered glass remains of a beer bottle scattered around his scarlet boots.

* * *

It takes him a bit to shake himself out of the blank shock, but when he kicks off the surface of the dock, he flies straight up until he breaks atmo and oxygen ceases to be a thing that exists.

He floats around with the satellites for what feels like hours, alternately staring down at the planet underneath him and out at the stars spread out above him. If he looks hard enough, he can still pick out the faint pinprick of Krypton against the endless black. The light from the planet’s immolation hasn’t reached Earth yet, even if its last son has already died and been brought back to life.

Once the lack of answers provided by the vacuum of space prompts him to admit defeat, Clark dives back to Earth and flies towards France.

He doesn’t really have an excuse for being there, and he doesn’t want an encounter with the lasso, so he’ll probably have to come clean about why he’s decided to show up in the middle of the work week with no warning. But it’s not like he can just walk into The Louvre in the suit and not attract a whole bunch of attention he doesn’t need. So he looks up Diana’s antiquities department in a nearby internet cafe ― much to the delight of tourists and locals alike ― then calls her from a payphone a few blocks away.

“Bonjour, Diana Prince parle.”

“Diana, hi,” Clark lets his head thunk audibly against the side of the booth. “It’s Clark. Can we, uh, can we talk? Are you busy?”

“Clark?” She sounds confused for a moment, followed by the sharp sounds of heels on hardwood. “Oh! Yes, of course. I am not busy. Are you dressed for work?”

Clark laughs quietly. “Ahh, sort of. Our line of work, at any rate.”

“Oh dear,” she laughs too, though Clark envies the lack of awkwardness about it. “In that case, shall I meet you on the roof?”

“If it’s not too much trouble?” Clark winces briefly. “I really don’t want to be a bother.”

“I will see you in ten minutes.”

Clark blinks at the dial tone emanating from the phone, then chuckles quietly. He hangs it up, listening to the metallic rattle of coins hitting a large pile, and slips out of the booth with a trailing whisper of his cape.

He touches down on the cathedral-esque roof opposite the Pyramid a few minutes later, then glances back at the sound of a metal door squeaking on its hinges.

Diana emerges in her full battle regalia; shield and all. She’ll probably be off on a patrol after this, just to make use of having put the effort into changing. Clark watches her as she approaches, and offers what he hopes is a friendly smile.

“It’s good to see you, Kal-El,” she grips his forearm as he offers a hand, then nods. “You look well.”

“...thanks. Likewise,” Clark nods in response, then glances down at his feet for a moment. He’s gotten over the initial jarring weirdness of being addressed as _Kal_ by someone who isn’t out to try and kill him. It’s helpful, actually, having a reminder that both halves of who he is are still accepted.

“So. I have a question. Well, a few questions. About Bruce.”

Diana’s brow furrows under her circlet, though she makes no move to interrupt.

“Was he-” Clark cuts himself off, swallows, starts again. “He was the one who made you guys bring me back, wasn’t he?”

“He was, yes,” Diana nods. “His guilt over what happened in Gotham played a larger part in that than it should have.”

Clark huffs a wry laugh. “Yeah. So is guilt the only thing he was feeling about it? About me?”

Diana’s frown deepens, which tells Clark that no, guilt is not the only thing Bruce was feeling about the whole ordeal. Oh boy.

“The battle with Luthor’s creature changed him,” Diana begins, moving towards the edge of the building and gazing out over the rooftops of Paris. “Your death unmade him.”

“ _Unmade him_? Diana, the guy was about a second from doing me in himself just before we all got acquainted,” Clark stares at her back, disbelieving. “I can’t have changed his mind that fast.”

She turns at that, and her features are suddenly unfathomably old. He forgets so easily that she’s existed for thousands of years in the very literal sense.

“He was proven misguided and manipulated in his quest, then you placed yourself on the pyre he felt that he deserved,” she intones quietly. “He had to rebuild himself in the vacuum that you left behind. He was...dogged, I suppose. Obsessive. Driven to do right by your memory.

“He goaded me in front of the team, a short time ago. Before you returned. About Steve Trevor. I had made a comment about the necessity of moving on, and he reacted...poorly. After that it was clear to me that he had laid a personal claim to you in a way none of us were meant to know.”

Clark swallows, uncertain. “...laid claim to me?”

“He wishes nothing but the best for you, Kal,” she smiles wanly. “But I do not envy your position here.”

Silence reigns for a few minutes and they both look out over the city spread out in front of them. It should feel more world-altering, he thinks. This new revelation that Bruce Wayne fell in love with him — or some facet of him — somewhere along the line while he was busy being dead. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that, so it stands to reason why their interactions after Chernobyl have been sparse. Nobody was ready for him to come back. Not even the guy who put the plan into motion.

“Diana,” Clark says eventually, turning to look at her. “Is he _in love_ with me?”

She gazes at him almost like a mother would a confused child. The comparison probably isn’t that inaccurate, considering the disparity in their ages and respective worldly experiences.

“As much as his public persona would have the world believe otherwise, Bruce loves deeper and more fiercely than most people I’ve ever known,” she says, slow and thoughtful. “Yes, Kal, I believe he is.”

“Jesus-” Clark rubs his hands over his face and paces the edge of the roof for a moment.

“What am I supposed to do with that? How? _Why?_ ” He gestures with both hands, at a loss. Then abruptly feels bad for raising his voice, because this isn’t Diana’s fault.

She doesn’t seem fazed, however, and just gives him that faint smile again. “I’m afraid this isn’t my place to get involved. And you are not obligated to do anything, Kal. Bruce has apparently tipped his hand when he wasn’t prepared to do so, judging by what you’ve told me, and here you are. But if there is something I can do to help, I will be more than happy to assist.”

Clark gives her a grateful look, then nods.

“Thanks, Diana,” he says, forcibly bleeding the tension out of his shoulders. “Seriously, thank you.”

“Of course, Kal. I look forward to our next meeting.”

Clark waves and takes to the air again, watching as Diana shrinks into the distance as he flies. For as much as he doesn’t quite trust anybody on the team yet, he’s starting to like her. And, if he’s being perfectly honest with himself, today went a long ways towards earning that trust.

* * *

He very nearly decides to bring the whole mess up with Ma, but veers sideways at the last minute. A good listener and a good friend, she’d said. If it was something Bruce wanted to discuss, he would’ve brought it up, and he clearly never did. So Clark tucks it away to ignore for a while and falls back into his nomadic habits from before anyone even knew he existed.

It’s getting him out of Smallville, for one thing. And he usually wears a set of clothes under the suit whenever he needs to switch into cape mode so he doesn’t have to drag luggage around. There’s no paper trail to follow either, since Clark Kent is still dead, but he makes his way just fine without conveniences like credit cards.

He hikes through the Sierra Nevadas, intervenes during a flash flood in Kolkata, provides emergency assistance after a major earthquake in the Philippines, and ends up wandering through the isolated moors of Scotland purely on a whim; enjoying the solitude while keeping up with his responsibilities as the Superman. He’s playing with some sheepdogs guarding their flock when he catches a faint shout of what he thinks might be his surname on the wind. He’s deliberately avoided thinking about Bruce aside from their brief interactions whenever the Bat summons the team, either for crisis intervention or logistical meetings. Now, for some reason, his brain immediately flips back to that day at the lake house.

Frozen in place, he tilts his head around to pinpoint the direction it came from and waits to see if it’ll come again.

“ _Clark!_ ”

There, first name this time... _Alfred?_

Clark blinks unseeingly into the distance for a moment. He’d recognize that voice just as he would Ma’s or Diana’s and he knows the wind isn’t playing tricks on him.

He’s in the air between one heartbeat and the next, breaking the sound barrier without effort as he streaks into the upper atmosphere to avoid air traffic. The only noise now is the wind howling around his ears and the rapid snapping of his cape as he cuts his way through the clouds. He’s diving over the county line of Gotham moments later, arrowing straight for the tinny source of Alfred’s voice over the comms system embedded in the Bat’s cowl.

At first glance, nothing terribly dramatic seems to be happening in the city. No fires, no gunfire, no explosions.

He hasn’t even spotted the Bat in question as he slows to a halt in midair, but he can tell none of the rest of the team is here. So Alfred called him in alone, which still means it’s pretty serious-

-the penthouse level of the highrise next to him quite literally explodes.

Clark flings his arms up in front of his face on instinct, then gapes as two distinctly human-shaped figures emerge from the flaming wreckage and continue a fight that’s likely been going on for a while on the now-exposed scaffolding that leads to the peak of the building.

One of the figures he recognizes easily by the cowled profiled alone, but the other one is a stranger. Two hilts crossed on his back ― swords, apparently ― and a featureless helmet divided down the center between vivid black and orange halves. He can’t make out much more in the leaping shadows thrown by the flames, but it’s unnerving enough to kick him out of the frozen shock and into action.

He dives to the base of the highrise, ushering bystanders away from the sidewalk until he’s gotten a working perimeter and the sirens of Gotham’s finest are wailing in the distance. That done, he takes a whirlwind tour of the highrise itself, depositing any people he finds inside back behind the invisible line he’s drawn for himself around the building. By the time he drops the last woman gently on her feet, the police and fire department have things mostly in hand, so he flies back up to the peak of the tower, following the sound of heavy caliber gunfire as he goes.

Bruce is still fighting, so far as he can tell, and the guy with the swords has a machine gun of some description out. It’s only when he sees the weapon’s muzzle flash that he also spots the stretch of suit exposed as Bruce raises an arm to grapple his way across the roof.

“No!”

Clark manages to lunge between the bullets and their intended target, though that has the unfortunate consequence of knocking Bruce off his original trajectory and off the edge of the building entirely. With no grapple.

He can only spare a second to blast the gun out of the equally startled criminal’s hands with his heat vision before diving over the edge of the highrise too. Bruce’s cape is flapping in tatters, revealing long tears in the reinforced fabric that have rendered it unable to serve as the pseudo parachute the Bat sometimes uses it as.

“Kent-!” Bruce’s distorted grunt sounds caught between exasperation and a tiny hint of awe as he lands in Clark’s arms bare feet from the concrete below and they’re suddenly rising back towards the sky.

Clark bears them to an empty stretch of roof several blocks away, then leaves Bruce there so he can zip back to the scene of the explosion. Irritatingly enough, the masked stranger from before is gone, and Clark has no way of tracking him, at least with his current lack of knowledge about who or what the man is. He sighs and gives the people far below a small wave once he’s sure there’s no one else in danger, then flies back to the roof he’d deposited Bruce on.

A quick scan with his x-ray spectrum vision as he touches down tells him that Bruce will likely be favoring his ribs for a while, but none of them seem to be broken. There doesn’t seem to be any severe bleeding or other obvious injuries either.

“Sorry,” he says into the silence as Bruce tsks at the state of his cape. “I know that was sort of my fault. Who _was_ that, though?”

Bruce glances up after a moment, hazel eyes bright against the greasepaint and severe black of the cowl even in the growing dark.

“Deathstroke,” he says, monotone. “Slade Wilson. Former enhanced super soldier. Current mercenary.”

Clark blinks, though he isn’t sure if all that was supposed to mean something. “Okay...was he trying to blow that business tower up or was that an accident?”

“Accident,” comes the warped growl. “My fault.”

Silence falls again and Clark feels the pressing need to fidget like a kid in class.

“Alfred worries. Sometimes _too much_ ,” Bruce cuts a glance at him, then starts making his way towards the nearest fire escape. “I apologize for inconveniencing you.”

He moves slower and stiffer than usual, which tells Clark there are probably more injuries he wasn’t able to discern from a quick once over. Or it’s been a long night and Alfred called in the big guns to make sure the Bat arrives home in one piece. Clark frowns, feeling wrongfooted all over again.

“Bruce..” he says, somewhat exasperated. “It wasn’t an _inconvenience_ , come on. We’re teammates, right? We help each other out.”

Bruce stills for a moment on the edge of the roof, back still towards him. “Teammates. Yes.”

At that, Clark straightens up and sets his feet where he stands. Time to stop beating around the bush.

“Okay, stop,” he says, and feels somewhat gratified by the way Bruce barely takes a step onto the top of the fire escape before pausing again. “We need to talk.”

“Do we.”

“Yeah, we do,” Clark refuses to be cowed by the modulated voice even if his hindbrain still remembers being pinned under its iron boot. “You can’t avoid me forever, Bruce.”

“Is that what I’ve been doing?”

“Yeah, it is,” Clark crosses his arms. “You don’t talk to me unless you have to, you make everyone else run interference otherwise, and _Alfred_ calls me in to help tonight? Look, I get that you fucked up back there. I would’ve freaked out too, in your shoes. But can we stop with the tip toeing?”

Bruce’s back is still turned, and Clark feels a bit like he’s talking to an immovable, implacable bat-shaped wall. He sighs.

“I have put you through _hell_ and you want us to act as though everything is _fine_?”

The distorted monotone somehow manages to inflect some incredulity in there and Clark feels a little lighter. Incredulity he can deal with. He can deal with a lot, actually. He’s been finding that out about himself.

“Not _fine_ , exactly. You’re right. We’re not fine,” Clark holds his hands up peaceably, offering a smile as Bruce finally turns around. “But we’re not _terrible_ , either. And I think we could work at doing better than not-terrible. What do you think?”

Bruce stares at him, looming in the dark and yet somehow managing to look almost lost.

“What are you saying, Clark?”

It’s not the first time he’s heard his name in the Bat’s modulated growl, but it is the first time in recent memory it hasn’t been flung like an epithet. Clark stares back at him, feeling lighter by the minute.

“I’m saying..” he trails off, wetting his lips before forging onward. “I’m saying maybe we should try that thing again. Now that I’m a little more caught up.”

He hasn’t spent the days or weeks agonizing over it, but he’s given it some thought. It wasn’t that he’d disliked being kissed by the man standing in front of him. It was just that he hadn’t understood _why_. There was so much time and space that he clocked out for and that nobody except his mother and Diana were willing to help fill in the gaps of. Now that he has a better grasp of the whole picture, he’s starting to think giving it a shot wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

“That’s an incredibly stupid idea.”

Clark snorts, unable to help himself.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. Teammates. Fraternization. Being _compromised in the field_. Whatever else you’re gonna try and lecture me about.”

Bruce blinks at him, though Clark doesn’t get the feeling of being peeled open and examined this time.

“Just...give it a shot with me? I get that you’re trying to — I don’t know — protect me? Something. But that’s dumb, Bruce. You don’t need to do that.”

There’s a warped sounding snort from Bruce’s direction, and Clark takes a few steps closer, smiling.

“I’ve thought about it and I want to. So are you gonna let me make my decision here?”

It takes a few more careful steps to get him close enough to reach out and touch, but he doesn’t. He waits for Bruce to look at him properly, and for the tense line of his shoulders to stop looking like he’s seconds from bolting off the edge of the roof.

Clark reaches out once he’s relatively confident that he won’t spook the man, and lays both hands on Bruce’s shoulders. No spooking yet. He smiles, then leans in.

It’s a far cry from the awkward clash on the dock, though there’s still plenty of awkward to go around. Bruce is almost utterly still under his hands; the only movement being his inhaled and exhaled breaths as his lips soften under Clark’s. Clark wonders if he felt even more like a statue. Probably, since he hadn’t had a clue what was coming.

He pulls back after a moment, then goes in again, tilting his head at a slightly different angle to avoid having the edges of the cowl digging into his face.

This one softens and shifts exponentially. Bruce gets one arm around his waist while the other circles his shoulders, pulling him in until there’s no space between them at all. Clark squeezes Bruce’s shoulders, moving one hand to his nape while the kiss grows lush and both of them start making unintentional noises. Clark wonders what it would feel like if Bruce’s suit weren’t made of layers upon layers of kevlar and nomex armor. Even with all that in the way, he can still pick up Bruce’s body heat bleeding through every inch of it.

Bruce pulls back with a sharp gasp, dragging Clark out of his hazy mental wanderings. He blinks at the greasepaint-smeared eyes, shivering as the unmistakable scent of human arousal hits his nose.

His nostrils must flare in reaction to it, or Bruce must clock some other tell, because he makes this strange strangled noise and grabs Clark by the hair, crushing their mouths back together. Clark wonders, a little dazedly, if Bruce’s _extensive research_ informed him about the acuteness of his sense of smell, or if this was just a fluke.

Bruce is crowding him across the roof until his back hits the raised wall of what he assumes is a storage shed or something. He’s still got both arms full of desperately squirming Bat, though he hadn’t quite thought this far ahead. The kiss? Sure. He’d thought about that. Dry humping like teenagers out in the open? Not exactly.

And yet...it’s really not sounding like that bad of an idea, all things considered.

Bruce is muttering something against his jaw, and it takes Clark a few seconds to parse it out as a continuous stream of the word “ _please_ ”, over and over like a mantra.

He isn’t sure what Bruce is pleading — _begging_ — for. He’d like to just rip the damn cowl off, consequences be damned, but even this out of it with most of the blood in his body concentrated in his groin he knows what a risk that would pose to someone whose identity is such a closely guarded secret.

So, Clark goes for a compromise: he digs his fingertips into the seam of the suit right at the groove of Bruce’s thigh and _rips_.

The armored codpiece tears away as easily as paper under the pressure of his strength and he has a brief moment to wonder just how much trouble he’ll be in once Bruce isn’t squirming and panting against him like a cat in heat. He doesn’t have much longer than that moment, though, since Bruce freezes almost simultaneously with the movement of his hand. The tension lasts just long enough for a garbled “ _fuck_ ” to escape the man’s throat, then he’s hiding his face against Clark’s neck and shuddering to pieces. Clark only figures out that Bruce actually came when the distinct tang of come hits his nose.

“Holy shit,” he murmurs, staring up at the inky sky overhead while Bruce shivers out the aftershocks in his arms.

Once things settle a bit, he starts to brace himself for Bruce lurching away and switching back into the normal caustic mood he’s always in. But it doesn’t happen. Bruce stays slumped against him, breathing shallowly against the side of his throat.

“That was expensive,” comes a surprisingly un-distorted groan. Bruce must have switched the modulator off somehow.

Clark laughs, relaxing fractionally.

“Yeah, I kinda guessed,” he says, rubbing absently at the small of Bruce’s back. “Oops?”

“‘ _Oops_ ’, he says,” Bruce groans again, though it’s more of a laugh this time. “Let’s see what he says when he finds out how many reporter’s paychecks a goddamn codpiece checks out to be.”

“You know, your pillow talk needs work.” Clark grins, leaning his cheek against the smooth curve of the cowl.

“Pillow talk?” Bruce sounds mildly affronted. “You haven’t even come yet, Kent.”

Oh. Right.

Clark blinks as he’s suddenly reminded of the heat centered between his legs. Everything was so...overwhelming for a few minutes there. He’d forgotten about it.

“Gonna do something about that?” He says, testing the waters.

Bruce finally lifts his head out of his hiding place against Clark’s neck and those hazel eyes narrow with a certain amount of concentrated intent.

“I’m going to be doing something about that somewhere we don’t have to worry about being interrupted.”

Clark’s dick gives an agreeable throb at that and he wets his lower lip, still watching Bruce’s face.

“Am I flying or are you driving?”

Bruce gives him a thoughtful look, then pushes far enough away to give them both a chance to put themselves together.

“Both. Race you to the house, farmboy.”

Clark watches him nimbly clamber off the roof and down the fire escape with no small amount of amusement. He can confidently say he wouldn’t have expected any of this to play out like it did just a few weeks ago, but now that it’s happened, he’s optimistic about where it might take them.

“You’re on, old man,” he says to the night air, before taking to the skies with a sonic boom that echoes across Gotham.


End file.
